To fulfil domestic duties much resolution is necessary, and a
serious kind of perseverance that requires a more firm support than
emotions, however lively and true to nature. To give an example of
order, the soul of virtue, some austerity of behaviour must be
adopted, scarcely to be expected from a being who, from its infancy,
has been made the weathercock of its own sensations. Whoever
rationally means to be useful must have a plan of conduct; and, in the
discharge of the simplest duty, we are often obliged to act contrary
to the present impulse of tenderness or compassion. Severity is
frequently the most certain, as well as the most sublime proof of
affection; and the want of this power over the feelings, and of that
lofty, dignified affection, which makes a person prefer the future
good of the beloved object to a present gratification, is the reason
why so many fond mothers spoil their children, and has made it
questionable whether negligence or indulgence be most hurtful, but I
am inclined to think, that the latter has done most harm.
Mankind seem to agree that children should be left under the
management of women during their childhood. Now, from all the
observation that I have been able to make, women of sensibility are
the most unfit for this task, because they will infallibly, carried
away by their feelings, spoil a child's temper. The management of
the temper, the first, and most important branch of education,
requires the sober steady eye of reason; a plan of conduct equally
distant from tyranny and indulgence: yet these are the extremes that
people of sensibility alternately fall into; always shooting beyond
the mark.
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